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commitment. That it is “unnecessary” in the practical sense to marry serves only to render the idea more compelling emotionally. Being married may be associated with caution, conservatism, and timidity, but getting married is an altogether different, more reckless, and therefore more appealingly Romantic proposition.
    Marriage, to Rabih, feels like the high point of a daring path tototal intimacy; proposing has all the passionate allure of shutting one’s eyes and jumping off a steep cliff, wishing and trusting that the other will be there to catch one.
    He proposes because he wants to preserve, to “freeze,” what he and Kirsten feel for each other. He hopes through the act of marrying to make an ecstatic sensation perpetual.
    There is one memory he’ll return to again and again in recalling the fervor he wants to hold on to. They are at a rooftop club on George Street. It is a Saturday night. They are on the dance floor, bathed in rapid orbits of purple and yellow lights, with a hip-hop bass alternating with the rousing choruses of stadium anthems. She’s wearing trainers, black velvet shorts, and a black chiffon top. He wants to lick the sweat off her temples and swing her around in his arms. The music and the fellowship among the dancers promise a permanent end to all pain and division.
    They go out onto a terrace illuminated only by a series of large candles distributed around the railings. It’s a clear night, and the universe has come down to meet them. She points out Andromeda. A plane banks over Edinburgh Castle, then straightens up for the descent to the airport. In the moment he feels beyond doubt that this is the woman he wants to grow old with.
    There are, of course, quite a few aspects of this occasion which marriage could not enable him to “freeze” or preserve: the serenity of the vast, star-filled night; the generous hedonism of the Dionysian club; the absence of responsibility; the indolent Sunday which lies before them (they will sleep until midday); her buoyant mood and his sense of gratitude. Rabih is not marrying—and therefore fixing forever—a feeling. He is marrying a person with whom, under a very particular, privileged, and fugitive set of circumstances, he has been fortunate enough to have a feeling.
    The proposal is at one level about what he’s running towards but also, and perhaps every bit as much, about what he’s running away from. A few months before he met Kirsten, he had dinner with a couple, old friends from his days at university in Salamanca. They had a lively meal catching up on news. As the three of them were leaving the restaurant in Victoria Street, Marta smoothed down the collar of Juan’s camel-colored coat and wrapped his burgundy scarf carefully around his neck, a gesture of such natural and tender care that it had the incidental effect of making Rabih appreciate, like a punch in the stomach, how entirely alone he was in a world wholly indifferent to his existence and fate.
    Life on his own had become, he realized then, untenable. He had had enough of solitary walks home at the end of desultory parties; of entire Sundays passed without speaking a word to another human; of holidays spent tagging along with harassed couples whose children left them no energy for conversation; of the knowledge that he occupied no important place in anyone’s heart.
    He loves Kirsten deeply, but he hates the idea of being on his own with almost equal force.
    To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn’t necessarily our fault as individuals. Society as a whole appears determined to render the single state as nettlesome and depressing as possible: once the freewheeling days of school and university are over, company and warmth become dispiritingly hard to find; social life starts to revolve oppressively around couples; there’s no one left to call or hang out with.